Turin (Italian Torino) – was the first capital of united Italy. Rome has been the official capital of Italy since 1870, but Turin is still the cultural capital of Italy. This sounds a little bit like Krakow and Warsaw, am I right? Turin, as well as Krakow, used to be a capital, but now both cities are famous for the rich culture and history. Based on the similar history I expected Turin to be similar to Krakow. It was, a little bit. Turin is the capital of Piedmont. This region is famous for great wines, so we couldn’t miss out on visiting the wineries. Barolo and Barbaresco are a must to visit. We spent the whole Saturday in two main wineries. You can read about it in our previous blog post.

We only had 24h to see the city. It’s not much time, but enough to get a glimpse of the city.Turin is famous for chocolate, coffee, cafes, and of course, Shroud of Turin. Shroud is definitely the most unique thing to see in Turin, but it’s not easy to see it. It shows up only on special occasions. On the other hand, cafes are easy to find, and you can see them everywhere.It was great to have so many options to drink coffee in the morning, but later in the day it was really hard to find a restaurant to grab a late lunch.

In Europe you have a lot of Churches with amazing architecture. You can spend days just walking from one to another and admiring stained glass, and other amazing details. We visited Santuario Della Consolata. It's definitely worth visiting.

Next to the Church is, of course, a coffee shop. Caffe Al Bicerin is one of the oldest Caffes in Turin. As most of the old places it’s relatively small, and you have to wait around 15 minutes in line to get there. Luckily, most people only drink coffee there so the line goes pretty fast. Caffe Al Bicerin is famous for the drink that carries the same name, Bicerin. It’s a traditional drink, which was first served in this coffeehouse. Bicerin, is a hot, dark chocolate with a shot of espresso, and whipped cream. Sounds delicious doesn't it? It does, and it tastes delicious. It’s not too sweet, it’s just perfect.

Caffe Al Bicerin was founded in 1763 as a small shop with coffee and chocolates. Later, around 1800 it became a real coffeehouse. There are a lot of options on the menu, and you can have your coffee exactly the way you like. Most people chose Bicerin anyway. I believe that most of them are tourists, like us, and come here only to try this famous drink. Why not, it’s delicious; the place is warm and cozy. It’s perfect for the lazy Sunday morning!Years ago this place was also busy. The whole elite were here, writers, poets, politicians, philosophers, and painters spent hours talking, writing, and discussing. Aleksander Dumas, Puccini or Nitzsche were one of the loyal customers.

Coffee gave us extra energy to go and see the city. The old city (center of the city) is not big. You can easily walk it in one day. We were there during off season so there weren’t too many people, but I bet there are a lot of tourists during the summer time. The best time to visit Turino is around May-June. We had a mixed impression about this city. On one hand, it has an enormous history, and can compete with big cities like Rome. On the other hand, it’s relatively small, and it's similar to Bergamo or Aosta. In fact, the city lost the small town charm and didn’t grow yet to be a big city.

Besides coffeehouses Turin is famous for museums, squares (plaza), and the Fiat factory. I would recommend going to the Museum of Egypt (the biggest outside of Cairo), the National Museum of Cinema, Museum of Fiat, and many more. In my opinion, those are the top three museums.

You can commute around the city by subway or bus. The subway was open in 2006 and it still feels like new. It’s clean, high tech, and pretty fast. There is no driver, and everything is controlled by computers – how cool is this?! No human interaction makes that train ride smoothly, and is always on time. For safety reasons the platform is protected, and there is no way to get on the track, and in the summer time it's AC in the station.

We enjoyed the Fiat Museum a lot. There are 3 levels and walking around you can see the whole history of motor vehicles. You walk through the time line and each step shows you different development stages. They also present different world wide events that shaped the motor vehicle industry. Events like Wold War II, Rock’n’roll era, and other milestones influenced what was developed in car factories. The biggest milestone was of course World War II when you see how delicate, royal cars transformed into big, heavy cars (we currently call them Jeeps).

We also saw Trabant, with a Polish insurance company sticker. They got it for sure from some polish collector.

The time in the museum flew. You don’t even notice when 3 hours go by. It was really interesting to see the whole history, but what surprised us the most was the future. It’s not really a future. Did you know that the first electric cars were invented in 90’s?

Solar powered cars were also invented many years ago. Something we consider as a near future in fact, was already invented years ago.

​The motor vehicle industry is not only cars, there are people behind them. There are designers, engineers, but also drivers. Formula 1 has a dedicated room, where you can learn about the cars, but mainly about the drivers, Formula 1 champions, and all the accidents that are associated with this sport.

Most European cities are the most beautiful at night. We decided to take an evening walk through Porta Nuova, Piazza San Carlo, Piazza Castello, and took Via Po Street to get to Mole Antonelliana. Mole Antonelliana is the highest building in Turin (167 m / 550 ft.). That’s where the Cinema Museum is.

Turin is definitely worth visiting. It used to be a royal city full of Café Society. Later, it became the capital of motor vehicles. Nowdays, it’s well-known for the Shroud of Turin. I think this city has a bigger potential, and one day it can become a great, beautiful, charming European city, and compete with places like Seville, Milan, or Krakow.